1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is design, fabrication, and operation of integrated circuit, or, more specifically, structure and methods of making and operating integrated circuit die stacks with translationally compatible vias.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas of computer technology that sees continual advancement is packaging of integrated circuits. Packaging many integrated circuits into a confined space is becoming more difficult as many devices continue to shrink in size or need to communicate with more chips. An example would be stacking multiple memory chips in one package to provide more locations to store data. Prior art has shown how to stack multiple chips on top of each other with package stacking, one die per package. Other prior art has shown how to stack multiple dies into one package by tying signal lines together between or among dies within the package, for example, wrapping signal lines outside the dies, or placing redistribution layers between the dies. A more recent approach for wafer stacking is to connect the signals together with vias, effectively sending a bus of signal lines vertically through a stack of dies. All of these approaches have the drawback of more heavily loading busses as more dies are stacked reducing signal quality and bus speeds.